United States Treasury Department.
To Whom It May Concern:
Regarding my Estimated Taxes for 2007
It is only with a huge reservation that I send this payment to the government as my first quarterly payment of the “Estimated Tax” for 2007, which money is to pay for Social Security and Medicare, as a “Self-Employment” Tax. (From the IRS website: “Self-employment tax is a social security and Medicare tax primarily for individuals who work for themselves. It is similar to the social security and Medicare taxes withheld from the pay of most wage earners.”)
You will note that I am not sending the full amount.
As a matter of conscience I will not voluntarily pay my hard earned money to a government whose daily order of business is waging war. By paying such I would be funding those activities, thereby participating in the war. (If I paid for the bullets a criminal used to kill someone, wouldn’t I be considered an accessory to murder?)
I refuse to pay military taxes.
I have, therefore, deducted a Token Amount to protest the use of my tax money in funding an illegal and immoral war.*
Because the IRS provides NO means for paying “Income Tax” separately from the “Self-Employment Tax”, I must deduct my token amount from the total. This will explain why I have withheld payment of $315.18, or 51% of the $618.00 calculated for my 2006 federal taxes (apart from the $2,224.00 Self-Employment Tax). This 51% corresponds to the proportion of the federal budget that goes to pay for present wars and war preparations, and for interest on the national debt accrued in order to pay for past wars.
* Our country is fighting an illegal war in violation of the rule of international law, and the Charter of the United Nations. The United Nations Charter is a treaty of the United States, and as such forms part of the “supreme law of the land” under the Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2. The UN Charter is the highest treaty in the world, superseding states’ conflicting obligations under any other international agreement. (Art. 103, UN Charter)
(The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. BBC News, Thursday, 16 September, 2004)
I do this because roughly half of the federal income tax is used to fund the US war machine. Monstrous amounts of dollars which could reinvigorate our ailing health, housing, and school systems are instead diverted to increase the profits of defense corporations and simultaneously destroy life. As federal support for education programs are slashed and more and more young people are told by military recruiters that the best way they can get a college education is to enlist, the spirit of our society takes a beating. The war machine continues at an incredible pace. I believe war tax resistance is a critical way to slow it down.
Currently, the US government is spending at least $3.9 billion a month to finance its war and occupation on Iraq, and the US military industrial complex.
I have protested in anti-war marches and parades both before and during this war. I continue to protest the war daily…in conversation; by posting anti-war signs in my yard; in letters written to the “president”, my senators and congresspersons; with bumper-stickers and posters.
The government’s blatant response has been to ignore my protests. “Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.” -Alexander Haig, U.S. Sec. of State, June 12, 1982
Tax resistance is the most direct way US citizens can avoid being complicit in this war. If all of us who have written our Congresspersons or taken to the streets also refuse to financially back the war, the decision-makers in Washington have a much harder time ignoring our resistance.
This is why I am writing today, and why you will not receive that 51% of my “tax bill” which the government would wrongly use to pay for war.
“If a thousand men [and women] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” —Henry David Thoreau, during the War against Mexico, 1846.
Sincerely, and in the Cause of Peace,
Michael Zargarov
